Today's History Lesson!!

Not such a bright day today, but still warm, and not bad for an English Summer, so on the way home from the library this morning, I took the scenic route along the River Chew, with a short detour for a sneaky peak at Albert Mill. The mill is a Grade II listed building of 'special interest', and was turned into housing some time ago, but there is still a public right of way through the mill, to the riverside.

For those of you interested, a potted history of Albert Mill!

The mill is believed to be one of the six watermills on the River Chew mentioned in the Domesday survey. During its long history it has been used for many industrial purposes: a grist or corn mill; a fulling mill, scouring and finishing woollen cloth; a cotton mill; a flax mill; a brass mill; for turning the local blue lias limestone into 'hydraulic cement' which was used for building purposes; an ochre mill which produced a bright red powder which was sold mainly for the production of paint, but also to linoleum and tile producers in Bristol and much further afield; for dyewood processing from the 1870s right up until the early 1960s, with the final load of logwood being processed in 1964, when the mill had, for some years, been the only source of dyewoods in the country; and finally… the mill was used solely as a chemical warehouse. Here endeth today’s history lesson!!

(Sorry for lack of comments recently, will catch up tomorrow when hopefully this thumping headache will have passed...)